Webber to leave after season
Mark Webber on Thursday confirmed what many close observers suspected when he announced that he will be leaving Red Bull and Formula One at the end of this season to switch to sportscar racing with Porsche’s LMP1 team.
The Australian, who will be 37 in August, has been expected to make a move ever since his Red Bull team-mate, triple world champion German Sebastian Vettel, disobeyed team orders to “steal” victory from him at the Malaysian Grand Prix in March.
Webber made the announcement by posting a Porsche statement on his website markwebber.com.
“It’s an honour for me to join Porsche at its return to the top category in Le Mans and in the sports car World Endurance Championship and be part of the team,” he said.
“Porsche has written racing history as a manufacturer and stands for outstanding technology and performance at the highest level.”
Red Bull said separately that a decision to replace Webber would be made later in the season.
But Finland’s Kimi Raikkonen, the 2007 world champion who returned to F1 with Lotus last year after a spell in rallying, is expected to be a leading contender.
At 33, he retains the pace and has the race craft to be a good replacement for Webber even if Vettel could be reluctant to adopt his allegedly carousing lifestyle. Another Australian Dan Ricciardo, currently with Toro Rosso, could also be in the frame if he rises to the challenge in the second half of this season and Raikkonen rejects the move.
Webber has previous experience racing in sportscars with Mercedes in 1998/99 before he went back to single-seaters in Formula 3000 en route to joining fellow-Australian Paul Stoddart’s Minardi team in F1 in 2002.
He made his debut at Melbourne in the Australian Grand Prix and famously finished fifth, a result that incited such crowd reaction that Webber and Stoddart were required to perform an unofficial podium celebration of their own.
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